Lurlynn Franklin
Lurlynn Franklin is an artist, writer, arts advocate, and an art educator born and currently residing in Memphis. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Minot State University and a master’s in Studio Painting and art education from Memphis College of Art. Since the age of 16, she has been a visual artist and muralist. Franklin has exhibited as a solo artist and in group shows locally, regionally and nationwide. Through her works she tells stories by merging her experiences and stories through societal commentary.
“Seeing community as power and the connectivity in everything is what has fueled my life and my career as an artist,” reflected Lurlynn Franklin. “The uniting of the self with the whole is important to the structure of my work.” Franklin teaches art history at the University of Memphis where she is also a graduate student concentrating in Art History of the African Diaspora. A member of the board of Arkwings Foundation where she was one of the four founders of the annual Frayser Local Arts Festival, she is also a teaching artist with the Brooks Museum of Art. She is the arts programming and gallery director and permanent Artist in Residence at The Orange Mound Gallery in collaboration with the Orange Mound Neighborhood and Veterans Association, a nonprofit founded by LueElla Marshall. An arts educator, having taught on the elementary, middle school and high school level for 25 plus years, she has held visual artist and muralist residencies with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Junior Achievement of Memphis, The Memphis Black Arts Alliance, Delta State University, and University of Tennessee at Martin. She is the 2023 recipient of Arts Memphis’ Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration
CRAFTING BLACKNESS 
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